Vivien Leigh at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, PA

Theater: Walnut Street Theatre
Show Title: Vivien
Opened: January 17, 2008
Seen: January 17, 2008
Reviewer: Madalyn Zerniak
Submitted: January 19, 2008

Vivien Leigh is undoubtedly one of the most dynamic actresses of the
twentieth century. Roles from Lady Macbeth to Scarlet O'Hara to Blanche
DuBois mark her career as both a film and stage actress.

Rick Roster's Vivien, now playing at the Walnut Street Theatre, offers
audiences an intimate look at the life and roles of Vivien Leigh. Set
in 1967 London, Vivien (Janis Stevens) arrives early for her first read
through of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance to find the theater empty.
Realizing that this is a dream (and that she is wearing only a
nightgown beneath her fur coat), she then takes the audience on a
journey through her life (though never speaking directly to the
audience), including her relationship with Sir Laurence Olivier and her
struggles with bipolar disorder and tuberculosis.

Janis Stevens is fantastic as Vivien Leigh. She captures all the
brilliance and madness of that actress as if Leigh herself had come
back to perform her own one-woman show. Stevens makes brilliant use of
the set (Meghan Jones), which is the perfect picture of simplicity,
consisting only of an old chaise, a ladder, hanging curtains, pulleys
and a flickering ghost light which incites Vivien to confront her own
ghosts.

As the empty theatre dissolves and she flits from one memory to the
next, she dresses herself in the spare costumes lying around the
theatre to depict many of her more famous roles. There are moments when
one cannot tell where Vivien ends and her character begins because the
words of Blanche, Antigone, Cleopatra and her other roles flow quite
naturally from Vivien's own dialogue.

Entering the theatre with no idea of what to expect, I was blown away
by the range of emotions that Stevens evokes both from her character
and from the audience. She perfectly captures Leigh's highs and lows,
her joy and sorrow, her mania and depression.